Days 2-5: Homecomings

Days 2 - 4,  October 8 -11
Having successfully written and posted my first blog from here, I am up to day 2. (Today it is day 9).  As I don't have to head to Nablus until noon, I am able to take my traveling buddy Doris to see the YABOUS CULTURAL CENTER in East Jerusalem, but outside of the Old City. It is open, but there are no funtions or exhibits going on so we look for signs of life in the basement offices.  Mona, the office manager, welcomes us and offers to show us around.  While we see the conference room (under rennovation) the movie theater that seats 80 in comfortable chairs complete with cup-holders, the exhibition hall where local artists can hang their work,  and the lecture hall, I ask Mona some questions. Their many cultural projects receive funding from abroad, but salaries have not been paid since last June. Norway had been covering that cost but had to shift its priorities from this center to the urgent needs in  Syria.  So the 11 staff members are living without any income, which is hard to imagine.  In spite of this hardship, they refuse to solicite money from any U.S. organization because they boycott the U.S. - an interesting twist on the BDS movement. (BDS is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, a campaign launched from Palestine in 2005 and picking up steam in the U.S. in the last couple of years. It is based on the South African anti-apartheid model of the 1980's and 90's.)
Next on my agenda was to get to Nablus to see Mohammed and his family, take care of PHF business, and be with "my family". Mohammed picked us up at the bus station and we went directly to the offices of the PALESTINIAN HOUSE OF FRIENDSHIP (PHF) to sort out how to spend our two days together.  Since I am a member of American Friends of PHF, I came with a list of tasks to accomplish with Mohammed. But first I asked about his now adult children. Raya was home from Turkey with her twin baby boys and 3 year old daughter last summer for one month. Now she is back in Turkey and has started her coursework for her PhD in public health administration. Her husband has not yet found work there, but provides essential child care while Raya studies.  Yazan, now 27, graduated from An-Najah University on September 18, with a major in business administration.  His graduation was a significant victory for him, since his studies were interrupted twice by arrests and jail time for the crime of being a young adult male in a country under military occupation.  Prison and torture took a toll on Yazan's outgoing personality, but I am happy to report that he has recovered his ability to smile, and that he has confidence in his ability to persue a career in business.
Majed, almost 20 and a junior at the university, was not home because he was in Germany for a 10 day student exchange program. He was one of only four students selected to represent An-Najah University in this program. I talked to him on the phone and could hear that he is loving this opportunity to be with his German peers, be interviewed by local newspapers and meet members of Parliament.  Twice before this he traveled alone to Turkey to visit Raya. He is coming into his own as a mature, cosmopolitan adult as well as having achieved popularity among rap musicians in the West Bank.  He and 3 friends have a  band called Behind Bars Band which has performed in Ramallah and Nablus. Majed is very serious about his music, which he sees as an essential avenue for expression of thoughts and feelings of youth under occupation.
After completing our PHF work together, Mohammed drove me to my Palestinian sister's home on the other side of the city. She is Ensaf, but prefers to be called Im Wafa, or Mother of Wafa, her oldest son.  Her husband, Yaser, is Abu Wafa, father of Wafa. Abu Wafa speaks a litte English and I struggle to communicate with the whole family with my few words of Arabic.  But love conquers all, and we have a great reunion.  Abu Wafa once told me that he would never have met Mohammed if it weren't for me, because they are from different class  backgrounds. He was deeply moved that "Doctor Mohammed" would honor his family with a visit to each other's homes.  Now they routinely speak on hoidays and inform each other of major family events, like Yazan's graduation and the injury just sustained by Abu Wafa's yougest son, 18 year old Mohammed.  He broke his foot at the construction site where he was working, and had to wait almost a week for a surgeon to come to Nablus from Ramallah to operate.  Luckily, the operation went well in spite of the delay.  Because I am part of this family, Im Wafa allowed herself to break down and cry when only I was present- a brief release of tension over her son's accident - a brief demonstration of the emotion that lurks under the surface, hidden from self and others as they endure the pressures of their daily life.
News in this family, whom I have known for 12 years, is that the eldest daughter is pregnant with her 4th child; Deena, 24, the next oldest daughter and my favorite, finished her teaching degree last Winter , another great achievement for this working class, refugee family, can't find work as a teacher, so is thinking of going to beauty school to learn hair dressing and make-up, where there is always a demand. She is married, but has no children and is bored at home alone.  Her younger sister, Diana, is pregnant with her second child. Dareen, age 9, at the top of her class in 4th grade, is very smart, so I hope she will learn English easily and can then translate for us!
Abu Wafa was working 5-6 days a week last year in his trade as a clothes presser,  but this year has little work due to a decline in the economy from the war on Gaza and the flood of Chinese products in the markets. Im Wafa continues to work full time as a Religious Studies teacher in a public school.  I didn't see Wafa, 32, this year, but assume he continues to work in construction to support his wife and 3 children.
Abu Wafa on the current situation in the West Bank:  He is not afraid, but is fed up with Israel. Checkpoints and travel restrictions have been reinstated since Gaza.  Meanwhile, there have been many demonstrations in Nablus against Israel's attack on Gaza, and people have collected blankets, food and money to send there. When injured Gazans have come to Nablus hospitals, people here visited them, since their Gazan relatives were forbidden to come.
When it was time to leave Im Wafa and the family, Mohammed came to drive us to the bus station to depart from Nablus.  We were assisted to get a seat in the crowded public transport van by a tall thin man who happened to be going, as we were, to Ramallah and then on to Bethlehem.  We eventually started talking to him and learned that he is a tour guide who had just dropped a group in Nablus and was returning to his home. Doris asked him if he knew Johnny A., a tour guide from Beit Sahour, and, sure enough, they are best friends!  Part of his story is that he had been a student at the American University in Jenin ( in northern West Bank), but did not continue there  because the checkpoints between there and his home city of Bethlehem (southern West Bank), made the travel time of 8 or 9 hours each way unbearable.  So he enroled in the Lutheran College Tour Guide program in Bethlehem and received his certification after two and a half years. It is a rigorous course to prepare to tell tourists accurate details about all they are seeing - whether historical, religious or political. Ramsi also told us that one of his two brothers just completed undergraduate studies in Cyprus and now must decide whether to come back to Palestine, where there are no jobs, or stay in exile in order to make a living somehow.   These are some of the difficult decisions that face young Palestinians today, and one always wonders how it would be if there were no military occupation placing limits on opportunity.